To Tallinn – with the following seas

To Tallinn – with the following seas

dsc_0316-001The wind forecast showed slightly lighter winds for a very brief moment on Thursday morning. We had been stuck in Viinistu for three nights, but finally, just after 5 a.m. we managed to sneak out of the harbour and into the blue. As soon as we were a safe distance from the rocky shore we hoisted the genoa and headed towards the west. The wind was behind us, and so were the seas – the famous following seas, that you so often hear sailors wishing for each other. Well, it may be nicer having them follow you rather than come straight at you, but with a very short and extremely wide beamed boat I’d rather take the waves sideways, thank you! Our little lady sailed very well, like she always does, but she kept wagging her tail with every wave coming from behind. And the waves were big! Still, we enjoyed every moment, and never felt any fear or uneasiness, even though sitting on top of a big wave looking down to the bottom of the next one almost made us feel queasy!

We had the sea all to ourselves again, until we got close to Tallinn. You could say there was quite a bit of traffic there! Port of Tallinn is a very busy harbour with nearly 10 million visitors a year, most of them from Helsinki but also from Stockholm and St. Petersburg, along with a lot of international cruise ship passengers. We saw several big boats at a very close distance. However, the guest marina in Pirita, also known as the Tallinn Olympic Yachting Center, was nearly empty.

We spent a couple of days shopping, walking around the town and enjoying delicious barbeque dinners on our “back porch” – in a large harbour all to ourselves, with the Tallinn city silhouette in the background.

But suddenly we were no longer alone! A big competition called the Helsinki-Tallinn Race began on Friday evening, an exciting night sail across the Gulf of Finland. The winning boats arrived right after dusk, and more boats kept coming all through the night. We woke up to some other boat’s crew stomping on our deck and adjusting our mooring lines, and as I put my head out of the hatch I could see every single inch of dock and quay taken by more than a hundred sailboats. The atmosphere in the marina was exciting, electric. There were people everywhere, dressed in their foul weather gear, shouting out orders, tidying up their boats, discussing weather and tactics. It felt fun to be in the middle of all this without actually participating in the race itself!

But we are more into adventuring at our own pace, and so we untied the lines once again and continued on our journey – leaving our gap at the quay for someone else to fill.

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